Communication, organising and ethics: a study of selected South African organisations and their HIV/AIDS communication strategies

Abstract:

This study addresses communication, organising and ethics in this time of HIV/AIDS. Special attention is given
to the HIV/AIDS communication strategies of selected organisations. As a prolegomenon, the study offers a
critique of current approaches which are in denial of the individual. An existential normative position is adopted
for this. But the task of the prolegomenon is not complete until an alternative approach with corrective
possibilities is offered.
Existential concerns are prioritised to assert that communication is, above all, a mode of existence. What is
advocated is not abdication of the objective in favour of the subjective. Rather what is proposed is that the
human being is biographically determined. Being is meeting.
A critical appreciation is shown of the structuration tradition for theorising communication and organisation from
among the rational structure and the organising process traditions of organisational communication. The
structuration tradition regards organisation as a manifestation of communication, or as different expressions of
the same phenomenon. The tradition posits neither determinism and its twin, objectivity, nor transcendence of
reality and its twin, subjectivity. This is particularly important in terms of the existential considerations of this
research.
The communicative interaction of individuals through which an organisation emerges, produces and
reproduces (un)ethical communication and organisation. Because strategic production and reproduction of
organisation is expressive of the possibility for denial of the individual, organising raises the question of ethics.
A universal embodiment of ethical practices that regards ethics as subjectively experienced is sought. Study of
selected South African business organisations’ HIV/AIDS communication strategies enables further insight into
this enquiry.
A manifesto on communication, organising and ethics in the time of HIV/AIDS is offered as a step towards
elaborating a corrective approach that begins with the individual.